In Barking, ISIS Laid Seeds of Terror for London Attack
The 10-story block of flats on King’s Road, Barking, could be anywhere in suburban London. Modern social housing with staggered metal balconies overlook a quiet residential street. The playful shrieks of children on their lunch break filter through from a nearby school. Residents leave their homes to get groceries or to walk their children on tree-lined sidewalks.
But the Elizabeth Fry Flats—named after the 19th century British social reformer known as the “Angel of Prisons”—harbored a peddler of death in London’s East End: Khuram Shazad Butt.
The 27-year-old British national of Pakistani descent—who also went by the name Abu Zaitun, or “Abz”—led a three-man jihadi cell on Saturday night that killed seven people and maimed dozens in a vehicle and knife attack initiated on London Bridge. Police shot dead all three men within eight minutes of the first emergency call outside the Wheatsheaf pub in nearby Borough Market.
Outside Butt’s apartment building, a five-minute walk from Barking’s bustling high street, three police vans remain stationed as authorities continue to investigate the motivations for the horrific attack claimed by the Islamic State militant group (ISIS), the third in as many months on British soil. Residents peer from their balconies, filming a club of gawping journalists stationed outside.
This is where Butt lived with his wife and two children, one a toddler and the other a newborn. British police named him and his accomplice Rachid Redouane, 30, of Moroccan and Libyan descent, on Monday evening. On Tuesday, they Youssef Zaghba. Butt was on the radar of Britain’s domestic security service, MI5, before Saturday’s attack, but Redouane was not, according to police.
